Saturday, May 28, 2005

Wi-Fi Transport Revolution in Portsmouth

This Guardian online article called 'Rush Hour Revolution' looks at Portsmouth and their new public transport system."What Portsmouth desperately needed was to get more people out of cars and on to public transport.But the city's congested streets played havoc with bus timetables,and unreliable scheduling deterred people from taking the bus.To encourage more people to ditch their cars,the city invested in a wireless mesh network:a web of wireless antennae,situated at bus stops,which supply the city streets with a huge amount of air-bound internet bandwidth".Further it says that "similar real-time passenger information schemes operate in London and Leicester,but the method of delivery is different because Portsmouth has built one of the most advanced wireless mesh networks in civilian use.A mesh network is a decentralised and inexpensive form of radio communication technology, developed by the US military so its special forces can communicate behind enemy lines".

No comments: